Facebook Apps Harvest and Sell Private Information in the Open Market

It’s often said that if you are not paying for something then you are the product. The reckless abuse of privacy information by millions of free apps available in various repositories regularly drives home this point.

Bogomil Shopov stumbled upon a deal selling more than a million Facebook profiles, each of which accompanied with the name and email address of the user, for only five bucks. Although he didn’t specify the source, it is probably the GigBucks listing pictured below. According to the offer description, the list consists only of active Facebook users, mostly from the US, Canada, UK and Europe. The data was harvested through Facebook apps.

An opt-in list with a million verified email addresses and names would have easily fetched hundreds of dollars in the decade gone by. However, now, it’s available for just five bucks. That in itself suggests that perhaps lists like these are not all that rare or difficult to find. Social media services like Twitter and Facebook have dramatically lowered the expectations of privacy among users. Most people will think twice before signing up for a dicey looking website, but will not hesitate to sign in through Facebook to play a quiz or take an IQ test. A little bit of carelessness and a little bit breach of trust is all it takes for your name to appear in a list like this.